"But what shall I do
with my
`White Heron' now she is written? She isn't a very good
magazine story,
but I love her, and mean to keep her for the beginning of my
next book"
(Fields 83). When Sarah Orne Jewett wrote these words to a
friend, the
Atlantic Monthly
had rejected her story "A White Heron," and she
was puzzled about its artistic merit. But after it appeared in
a collection
of her stories in 1886, it immediately attracted compliments
from friends
and fellow writers.1 Since then,
it has become
her most anthologized and best known story (Cary 101). I feel
that the
key to both the Atlantic's puzzlement and the story's
wide appeal
is its handling of the hero archetype. Sylvia, the
protagonist, becomes
a traditional hero who makes a quest after a much desired
object. The Atlantic
editors
probably did not know what to make of this work of fantasy
from a normally
down-to-earth local color realist. But the story is much more
than a simple
fantasy. For Jewett, it seems to have been a personal "myth"
that expressed
her own experience and the experience of other women in the
nineteenth
century who had similar gifts, aspirations, and choices. And
for modern
readers its implications are even broader.

The hero archetype has
been ably
treated by a number of writers,2
but the definitive
treatment is probably Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a
Thousand Faces
(1949). Campbell draws the hero's basic story from his
survey of myths,
tales, rituals, and art from all over the world. The hero's
career, he
says, has three main parts. In the first, the "Departure," the
hero receives
a "call to adventure." By a seeming accident, someone or
something invites
the hero into "an unsuspected world," into "a relationship
with forces
that are not rightly understood" (51). Often he receives
supernatural aid
from a "protective figure" who helps him in his adventures. In
the second
part of the hero's story, the "Initiation," the hero crosses a
dangerous
"threshold" into a strange, fluid, dreamlike world where he
undergoes a
succession of trials (69). The climax of these trials is the
hero's victory
over all opposition. Sometimes this victory is accompanied by
a mystical
vision that shows the hero something of the life-creating
energy of all
existence (40-1). The third part of the hero's story is the
"Return." Because
of his victory, he now has a "boon" to bestow upon those he
has left behind
(30). The trip back to his homeland can be arduous, but once
back he has
a choice and a problem. He can withhold or bestow his boon,
whatever he
wants (193). And he must somehow integrate, if he can, his
transcendental
experience with the "banalities and noisy obscenities" of his
old world"
(218).

This summary of
Campbell's archetype
fits "A White Heron" exactly. "A White Heron" is the story of
Sylvia, a
nine-year-old girl, who goes in quest of an exotic, almost
miraculous bird.
She herself has unusual gifts. Since coming from a "crowded
manufacturing
town" to live with her grandmother deep in the forest, she has
become,
as her name suggests, a "little woods-girl," a forest nymph (A
White
Heron 5). Her closeness to the forest and to the forest
creatures is
phenomenal. "There ain't a foot o' ground she don't know her
way over,"
her grandmother says, "and the wild creatures counts her one
o' themselves.
Squer'ls she'll tame to come an' feed right out o' her hands,
and all sorts
o' birds" (9). Her tale begins when the unexpected breaks into
her life
- a young hunter whistles and emerges from the shadows into
her pathway.
She is frightened but leads him home where her grandmother
promises him
a night's lodging. After supper, he explains that he collects
birds - kills
and stuffs them - and that he wants particularly to find a
white heron,
rare to the area, that he had glimpsed only a few miles away.
He offers
ten dollars to anyone who might help him find its nest.
Sylvia's heart
beats wildly, for not only would the ten dollars buy "many
wished-for treasures,"
but she has herself seen the same white heron. This, to use
Campbell's
terms, is her "call to adventure." The next day she tags along
behind the
hunter, grows increasingly fond of him, and decides to find
the heron's
nest.

At this point, Jewett
tells us
that a "great pine tree, . . . the last of its generation,"
stands at the
edge of the woods taller than any other tree around (14). This
tree, we
come to learn, has magical properties. Sylvia has often
thought that from
the top of this tree one could see the sea, something she
dreams of doing.
But now the tree means more. Not only could one see "all the
world" from
its top but the white heron's "hidden nest" as well (14). The
next morning,
the "Initiation" part of Campbell's archetype begins. She
steals out of
her house before daybreak and goes to the tree, "the monstrous
ladder reaching
up, up, almost to the sky itself" (16). Her "threshold" is a
white oak
that just reaches the lowest branches of the pine tree: "When
she made
the dangerous pass from one tree to the other, the great
enterprise would
really begin" (16).

Once on the pine tree
she experiences
the most difficult trials of her journey. The way is "harder
than she thought;
she must reach far and hold fast, the sharp dry twigs caught
and held her
and scratched her like angry talons, the pitch made her thin
little fingers
clumsy and stiff" (16-17). But the tree itself now awakens to
act as her
supernatural guardian. It is "amazed" that "this determined
spark of human
spirit" is climbing it. It loves "the brave, beating heart of
the solitary
grey-eyed child," steadies its limbs for her, and frowns away
the winds
(17).

The climax of Sylvia's
climb
is a mystical experience corresponding to that in Campbell's
archetype.
For her, the pine tree becomes a tree of knowledge; it is,
after all, like
a "great main-mast to the voyaging earth" (17). At the top,
"wholly triumphant,"
she sees the sea for the first time, "with the dawning sun
making a golden
dazzle over it." She looks westward at the woods and farms and
sees that
"truly it was a vast and awesome world" (18). And at the same
time, she
also sees the "solemn" white heron perched on a lower branch
of her tree,
and she sees it fly to its nest in "the green world beneath"
(19).

Now she "knows his
secret" and
begins the third part of the hero's journey, the "Return." The
way down
is "perilous" and "her fingers ache and her lamed feet slip"
(20). But
she reaches home finally, where the hunter and her grandmother
await her
expectantly. All she has to do now is bestow her "boon." But
although the
hunter "can make them rich with money" and "is so well worth
making happy"
(21), Sylvia at the last minute holds back her secret. Why?
asks the author.
Why, when "the great world for the first time puts out a hand
to her,"
does she "thrust it aside for a bird's sake"? The answer is
that Sylvia
"remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden
air and how
they watched the sea and the morning together"; she cannot
"give its life
away" (21). As in Campbell's archetype, Sylvia exercises her
option to
withhold her boon. She chooses to remain in the world of
nature, the place
of her adventures and the subject of her revelation. She will
not - or
cannot - integrate it with the materialistic world beyond the
forest that
now beckons to her.

The resemblance of
Sylvia's experience
to the hero archetype described by Campbell is probably not
coincidental.
Jewett was fond of the same kind of fantasy literature on
which Campbell
bases his archetype. It would not have been out of the way for
her to write
an adult fantasy of her
own.3
But if Sylvia is a traditional hero, what is she a hero of?
That is, what
does she fight for? What does she fight against? What does she
renounce?
Had Jewett simply ended the story with Sylvia's refusal, the
answers to
these questions would be quickly forthcoming. Sylvia would be
a heroic
defender of pristine nature against those who would reduce it
to a commercial
value - ten dollars for the life of one heron. Sylvia, of
course, refuses
to betray nature, and in this way "A White Heron" is a
"conservation" story.
Most of the commentators on this story interpret it in exactly
this way
(See Cary 55-6, 102; Martin 144; Matthiessen 83, and Thorpe
39).

But Jewett does not
end the story
with Sylvia's refusal. She adds a paragraph that broadens the
implication
of the story and makes its meaning ambiguous. Here is the
paragraph, the
final one of the story:

Dear loyalty,
that suffered
a sharp pang as the guest went away disappointed later in the
day, that
would have served and followed him and loved him as a dog
loves! Many a
night Sylvia heard the echo of his whistle haunting the
pasture path as
she came home with the loitering cow. She forgot even her
sorrow at the
sharp report of his gun and the sight of thrushes and sparrows
dropping
silent to the ground, their songs hushed and their pretty
feathers stained
and wet with blood. Were the birds better friends than their
hunter might
have been, - who can tell? Whatever treasures were lost to
her, woodlands
and summer-time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and
tell your secrets
to this lonely country girl! (21-22)

The story now no longer seems to be merely about a
choice
between nature and someone who would destroy it but between
"love" - a
woman's love for a man - and loyalty to something else,
something that
inevitably leads to loneliness and isolation. Sylvia's
attachment to the
hunter, we learn earlier, is not just friendship or affection
but romantic
love. Although she cannot "understand why he killed the very
birds he seemed
to like so much," she watches him "with loving admiration" (12),
"her grey
eyes dark with excitement" (13). Her "woman's heart," asleep
until now,
is "vaguely thrilled by a dream of love," and the "great power"
of love
stirs and sways them both as they traverse "the solemn woodlands
with soft-footed
silent care" (12-13). Because of this new love, she makes her
quest: "What
fancied triumph and delight and glory for the later morning,"
she thinks,
"when she could make known the secret! It was almost too real
and too great
for the childish heart to bear" (15).

Looked at
realistically, this
love motif makes little sense. Sylvia is only nine years old.
Even if she
told the hunter her secret, he would leave the area, probably
never to
return. Yet Jewett makes it seem as if Sylvia could have
fulfilled a long-term
commitment to the hunter, something akin to marriage. Jewett
also indicates
that the results of Sylvia's choice will be loneliness and
lost "treasures,"
even though Sylvia returns to the same idyllic conditions that
existed
before the hunter emerged. Finally, Jewett casts doubt upon
the rightness
of Sylvia's choice.

Why does she
complicate the story
in this way? The answer I find most plausible is that the
story is not
meant to be strictly logical or realistic, but rather that it
had a special
symbolic value for the author. Jewett's own life, in its
outlines, is similar
to Sylvia's. When she was a child growing up in South Berwick,
Maine, she
had her own glimpse of shimmering ideals. She learned of South
Berwick's
former glory and vigor from various members of her family. She
came to
love the New England world of nature. And she saw a seemingly
perfect blend
of strength, love, knowledge, and wisdom embodied in her
father. Her father
was the greatest influence on her life. From watching him at
work, studying
his medical books, and reading the literature he urged upon
her, she early
decided that only a professional life of some kind would
satisfy her emotional
and intellectual needs. When she graduated from Berwick
Academy, she considered
a medical career but rejected it because of poor health.
Instead, she turned
to writing. Her "triumph," like Sylvia's, came very early. By
her nineteenth
year she had published her first story, and by her twentieth
she had published
a story in the nation's most prestigious literary magazine,
the Atlantic
Monthly. She devoted the rest of her life to a very
successful literary
career. During all this time she never took a suitor or
considered getting
married (Cary, Frost, Matthiessen).

One critic has already
suggested
that Sylvia's rejection of the hunter represents Jewett's own
decision
not to get married. Eugene H. Pool argues that, because of
Jewett's deep
emotional attachment to her father, she could never give up
her childhood
and become a mature woman. Instead she chose to remain
incomplete emotionally
(Appreciation of Sarah Orne Jewett 223-8). Jewett
clearly had a
nostalgic longing for her childhood. She expresses it in many
of her letters
and stories (for example, Fields 124, 132). But it seems
equally likely
that the story represents a more conscious choice that Jewett
began to
make as a child, that between a life independent of men and a
life dependent
on men, between a career and marriage. Although Jewett seems
never to have
regretted her choice, she was obviously thinking about it
around the time
she wrote "A White Heron." And as she thought about herself
she thought
also of other women who faced similar choices.

Two works that
illustrate this
line of thought are "Farmer Finch," a story published in the
same volume
as "A White Heron," and ACountry Doctor, a
novel published
two years before, in 1884. The world of all her fiction is one
of weak
men and strong women. With only a few exceptions, her men are
deceptive,
shiftless, cowardly, garrulous, cruel, thoughtless, vain,
senile, drunken,
and easily defeated. To fill the vacuum left by their
abdication of responsibility,
she created self-reliant and versatile women, a type that she
clearly admired
(Cary 39). "Farmer Finch," about a girl who takes over the
family farm
during a time of crisis, and ACountry Doctor, about a
girl who chooses
to enter the medical profession, contain two such women, both
of whom are
similar to Sylvia. Like her they are young and tied to nature
in a way
that emphasizes their purity, strength, and potential. Like
her, they conceive
of ideals that are deeply personal, that provide a standard of
evaluating
all things, and that emanate from nature. Like her, they are
confronted
by young men who force them to choose between romantic love
and their ideals.
And like her, they reject these men in order to protect and
follow the
dictates of their ideals.

What ties all three
works to
Jewett's own experience is that one, ACountry Doctor,
is
unquestionably autobiographical. Nan Prince, the heroine of ACountry
Doctor, isstrikingly like the young Sarah
Jewett, and Dr. Leslie,
Nan's guardian, is the author's portrait of her father.
Through Nan, Jewett
is clearly reliving her own experience, and thoughshe
did not herself
have a suitor, she gives Nan one. She is also, by having Nan
become a doctor,
putting herself in the position of any woman who would choose
a career
instead of marriage, especially one as controversial for women
to enter
then as medicine. By dramatizing Nan's experience, she thinks
through what
a woman making such a choice would have to overcome.

Polly Finch and Nan
Prince, then,
are heroes who fight for a woman's right to seek a place in
society commensurate
with her talents and aspirations. They bravely fight against
arbitrary
oppositions to this right and reject suitors, even marriage
itself, to
win it. "A White Heron" is a reworking of this material, but
because Jewett
blurs its realism, she gives it a much wider appeal. Sylvia is
a hero on
several levels of meaning. On the literal level, she is a
backwoods girl
who quests for something that the man she "loves" wants, and
at the climax
of her quest she finds something much more valuable. She sees
the sea,
the morning sun, and the countryside - symbolically, the whole
world -
all at once. Unconsciously she realizes that the white heron
represents
the essence of this mysterious new world, and she cannot
betray it for
a mere ten dollars. On another level, she is Jewett herself
and other women
like her who heroically reject the too-confining impositions
of society
for an independent, self-fulfilling life lived on their own
terms. Sylvia's
age underscores the abstract nature of that choice. She is not
just rejecting
one man; she is Jewett's surrogate, rejecting all men. But
unlike the more
polemical "Farmer Finch" and A Country Doctor, "AWhite Heron"
qualifies the triumph of that choice. The final paragraph
seems to suggest
that such a choice is fraught with risk - the risk of
loneliness, isolation,
disappointment, limited opportunity, and doubt. On a third
level the story
achieves its most universal appeal. Sylvia is anyone who
unselfishly quests
for knowledge, receives a stunning revelation, and resists any
cheapening
of it. The hero, someone has said, does what normal people are
not brave
enough or strong enough to do. Most of us would have taken the
ten dollars,
if only to retain the warm approval and appreciation of those
we love.
But Sylvia does not, and she pays the penalty. This is her
heroism. We
admire her for it and would strive to do likewise.

University
of
North Carolina at Greensboro

Notes

This essay was published in Colby Library
Quarterly
21:1 (March 1985): 22-7. It is reprinted here by permission of
the Colby
Quarterly.

3 Information on
Jewett's reading
can be found in Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jewett's
volumes of letters
edited by Cary and Fields, Frost, and Matthiessen. For a
comparison of
the story to the fairytale pattern, which to an extent
embodies Campbell's
archetype, see Hovet. [ Back
]